Ruling on answerline protests

[rachelez]

Given all the rules discussions happening recently, I also had a rules question about something that happened a while ago. Specifically, my team (Maryland) played this question at 2024 NASAT:

The virulence of a strain of this pathogen is caused by an N501Y mutation in its RBD. Outbreaks of this pathogen in India caused a surge in cases of mucormycosis. The protease inhibitors nirmatrelvir and ritonavir are co-packaged in an oral drug for this pathogen. TMPRSS2 primes a protein from this pathogen by acting on its furin cleavage site. The RECOVERY trial evaluated treatments for this pathogen, including dexamethasone. Millions of Danish minks have been culled over fears of harboring this pathogen, which binds to human ACE2 through its spike protein. Ageusia, loss of smell, and chronic fatigue syndrome are associated with the "long" form of a disease caused by this pathogen. For 10 points, name this pathogen whose variants include delta and omicron.
ANSWER: COVID-19 [or SARS-CoV-2; or coronavirus disease 2019; prompt on SARS-CoV]

My teammate gave an answer of "COVID-19", but the other team protested that COVID-19 should not be accepted as it is not a pathogen. This protest was upheld and we lost the game, despite the WHO referring to SARS‑CoV‑2 as "the COVID-19 virus" in public health communications and COVID-19 being accepted in other rooms and at future mirrors. This ultimately led to us losing the championship that year, as our final would've been one game instead of disadvantaged and we won the first game of the finals sequence. In the discussion server after the tournament, the editor of this question ultimately said had they had the ability to rule on the protest, they would have accepted our original answer. I never really quite understood the reasoning behind this ruling, so I'm wondering if perhaps more experienced quizbowlers here could shed some light on what rules are applicable in a situation like this and what the proper procedure is / should be? Thanks!

[dni]

Under ACF rules, this protest resolution is unambiguously incorrect. There is a clause in rule G.18 explicitly disallowing the answerline to be overridden for this reason:

Unless an answer line expressly allows otherwise, a player’s given answer must contain the proper word form(s) which could refer directly to the answer — a proper noun if the desired answer is a proper noun, an adjective if the desired answer is an adjective, etc. — and an answer which merely contains another word or phrase derived from the desired answer is not acceptable on its own. (E.g.: “Freudian slip” alone is not an acceptable answer if the desired answer is “Sigmund Freud,” and “spoonerism” is not an acceptable answer if the desired answer is “Reverend William Spooner,” unless the answer line permits it.)

In this case, the answer line explicitly permitted "COVID-19" and "coronavirus disease" as alternate answers, which the clues also reference, so there is no basis to overrule it, at least with the stated reasoning.

Practically speaking, writers frequently elect to accept answers that are similar to, but not exactly the same as, the "true" answer. These often do not match the indicator. In particular, they might choose to do so when that answer is clued in the question, and/or includes the required portion of the "true" answer. This happens all the time, including in NASAT. Picking a random such question off QBReader, the resolution you described is analogous to overriding the below answerline and rejecting "The Death of the Author" because "well actually that's an essay not a type of person." Such a decision is clearly nonsensical and at odds with both the rules and established norms.

A work's "core norms and choices" are embodied by an "implied" type of this person according to Wayne C. Booth. A lecture titled for these people borrows the question "What does it matter who is speaking?" from Texts for Nothing to argue for their namesake "function" of discourse. In an essay titled for these people, a passage about a castrato disguised as a woman is used to define an activity as the "destruction of every voice." Michel Foucault gave the lecture "What is [one of these people]?" in response to an essay that argues we should replace them with the "scriptor." The idea that the meaning of these people can be known through text was termed the "intentional fallacy" by W. K. Wimsatt. For 10 points, name this type of person, whose "death" titles a 1967 essay by Roland Barthes.
ANSWER: authors [or writers; accept implied author; accept "What is an Author?"; accept "The Death of the Author"; accept the author-function; accept authorial intent]

Finally, a quick Google search reveals that several reputable sources explicitly use "COVID-19" to refer to the virus as well, so the original answer is literally just correct. For example:

To avoid confusion with the disease SARS, the WHO sometimes refers to SARS‑CoV‑2 as "the COVID-19 virus" in public health communications

Frankly, I have no idea why this protest was upheld. Unless some crucial details have been omitted, this is an absurdly incompetent resolution on the part of whomever was on the NASAT protest committee.

[1.82]

As someone who has adjudicated protests at multiple national championships, I agree with Dan. Even if the answerline hadn't directly allowed the given answer, the documented evidence that "COVID-19 virus" is used as a synonym for "SARS-CoV-2" would lead to the protest being summarily denied.

[AKKOLADE]

Given all the rules discussions happening recently, I also had a rules question about something that happened a while ago. Specifically, my team (Maryland) played this question at 2024 NASAT:

The virulence of a strain of this pathogen is caused by an N501Y mutation in its RBD. Outbreaks of this pathogen in India caused a surge in cases of mucormycosis. The protease inhibitors nirmatrelvir and ritonavir are co-packaged in an oral drug for this pathogen. TMPRSS2 primes a protein from this pathogen by acting on its furin cleavage site. The RECOVERY trial evaluated treatments for this pathogen, including dexamethasone. Millions of Danish minks have been culled over fears of harboring this pathogen, which binds to human ACE2 through its spike protein. Ageusia, loss of smell, and chronic fatigue syndrome are associated with the "long" form of a disease caused by this pathogen. For 10 points, name this pathogen whose variants include delta and omicron.
ANSWER: COVID-19 [or SARS-CoV-2; or coronavirus disease 2019; prompt on SARS-CoV]

My teammate gave an answer of "COVID-19", but the other team protested that COVID-19 should not be accepted as it is not a pathogen. This protest was upheld and we lost the game, despite the WHO referring to SARS‑CoV‑2 as "the COVID-19 virus" in public health communications and COVID-19 being accepted in other rooms and at future mirrors. This ultimately led to us losing the championship that year, as our final would've been one game instead of disadvantaged and we won the first game of the finals sequence. In the discussion server after the tournament, the editor of this question ultimately said had they had the ability to rule on the protest, they would have accepted our original answer. I never really quite understood the reasoning behind this ruling, so I'm wondering if perhaps more experienced quizbowlers here could shed some light on what rules are applicable in a situation like this and what the proper procedure is / should be? Thanks!

A brief update: the answer line for this question was changed after the main site of NASAT to accept COVID-19 at the encouragement of the editor of the question.

Disregard this, this was misremembered on my part.

A longer post will be made by me in the next few days.

[AKKOLADE]

I haven’t forgotten this; I’ve exist been in bed for the past week with a cold. Hoping to get time and clearheadedness to write up my response this week.

[Nurostep]

Fred it's been a month we're all on the edges of our seats please

[AKKOLADE]

First of all, my apologies for the delay in making this post. I pushed this back for too long.

When deciding a protest, you take a multi-step process before ruling on that protest, mainly by addressing two things:

1) Was the protest legal to make? Section H of the ACF Gameplay Rules addresses this. This step is to differentiate from protests that are on things that shouldn’t be considered by the rules; this is specified in H.6 (“Nothing else is protestable…”)

2) Is this protest factually correct? You can say that Mark Twain is an acceptable answer for a tossup with the answer line of “French fries,” but there needs to be some evidence that for some reason, Twain should be accepted.

You can add “Does this protest mathematically matter?” as the first step as you’re going through your protest resolution algorithm.

The question, with the buzz denoted, is as follows:

“The virulence of a strain of this pathogen is caused by an N501Y mutation in its RBD. Outbreaks of this pathogen in India caused a surge in cases of mucormycosis. The protease inhibitors nirmatrelvir and ritonavir are co-packaged in an oral drug for this pathogen. TMPRSS2 primes a protein from this pathogen by acting on its furin cleavage site. The RECOVERY trial evaluated treatments for this pathogen, including dexamethasone. Millions of Danish minks have been culled over fears of harboring this pathogen, which binds to human ACE2 through its spike protein. *BUZZ*”

The answer given was COVID-19, which was initially accepted as correct. The opposing team protested that it should not be accepted as COVID-19 is the disease, not the pathogen.

Mathematically, this protest obviously mattered, so we move on to the next question: Is this a legal protest? The answer is yes. Rule H.5.F. clearly states that the following error is protestable: “The opposing team gained points for an answer which should have been ruled incorrect, but was ruled correct due either to moderator error or to an error in the packet.”

The rule cited by Dan Ni – G.18 – does nothing to change the fact that H.5.F applies. G.18 makes it clear that unless specified on the answer line itself, what I’ll term “almost answers” should not be accepted as the answer to a question.

We then move to if this protest is factually correct – if COVID-19 should not have been accepted as it is the name of the disease and not the pathogen.

The question is clear in that it is asking for the pathogen, and not the disease. There are no errors in the question where a phrase other than “the pathogen” is used as the identifier for what the answer is. I do not believe that there is a sentence that is unclear as to what it is asking for. Thus, the correct answer needs to be the “pathogen.”

It’s important to note that it is not always the case that pathogens share part of the names of the diseases they cause. Examples include AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus), African sleeping sickness (Trypanosoma brucei), and the bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis).

Is COVID-19 the name of the pathogen? Strictly speaking, no – it’s well established as being named “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” or “SARS-CoV-2.” Wikipedia mentions that it was provisionally named “2019 novel coronavirus” and also has been referred to as “human coronavirus 2019.”

When this was discussed in the quiz bowl Discord, it was mentioned that there are pages on the World Health Organization’s website that refer to the pathogen as the “COVID-19 virus.” While this is correct, I do not believe these pages were written in such a way that that phrase was being treated as the name of the pathogen. This page is an example of such a page.

To me, this is no different than writing “the bubonic plague bacteria.” That phrasing isn’t coining a name for the disease. It’s another way of writing “the bacteria that causes bubonic plague.”

I concluded, and still believe this is correct, that accepting COVID-19 in this circumstance is not correct. That is not the name of the pathogen. It is akin to accepting “the 16th president” as a correct answer for a question on Abraham Lincoln. The answer given is descriptive, not nominative. Accepting “bubonic plague” for a similarly written question on “Yersinia pestis” should not be acceptable.

I did consult with a board-certified infectious disease physician on this protest; they agreed with me that I should reject the answer. I also consulted with the head editor of the set on this protest. But the final call came down to me. If you disagree with this ruling, then it’s mine that you have an issue with.

I think this is my least favorite kind of player mistake to have to penalize, but things have names. Description acceptable answer lines have their place in the game, but every question can't be a description acceptable approach to the answer line.

[Stinkweed Imp]

I think this is my least favorite kind of player mistake to have to penalize, but things have names. Description acceptable answer lines have their place in the game, but every question can't be a description acceptable approach to the answer line.

Regardless of the correctness of this protest resolution (which personally I still think is ridiculous), it is absolutely an editor mistake to include an apparently incorrect answer as the primary answerline of the tossup (an answer that presumably many people answered with and were ruled correct), resulting in someone being deprived of points in the most unsatisfying way possible.

(and consulting the qbreader database, all of the science tossups on either bubonic plague or Yersinia pestis prompt on the other one)

[thedoge]

I think this is my least favorite kind of player mistake to have to penalize, but things have names.

Unlike the other examples you provided (e.g. “the bubonic plague bacteria”)[^1] COVID-19 virus is a name (I even found a mayoclinic source after 1 minute of searching on my phone) that is used by reputable medical sources and unambiguously refers to a single virus, in my eyes this is a prompt at worst and an accept at best (what I would do). Quizbowl also has norms about accepting things that don’t exactly match the indicator (if you want to argue that point), but Dan Ni put it better than I can.

[^1]: Funnily enough, I get tons of results when I search “bubonic plague bacteria” with the quotes in Google.

[1.82]

Since we all know how protests work, I've taken the liberty of condensing Fred's post to the relevant portions:

The question is clear in that it is asking for the pathogen, and not the disease. There are no errors in the question where a phrase other than “the pathogen” is used as the identifier for what the answer is. I do not believe that there is a sentence that is unclear as to what it is asking for. Thus, the correct answer needs to be the “pathogen.”

It’s important to note that it is not always the case that pathogens share part of the names of the diseases they cause. Examples include AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus), African sleeping sickness (Trypanosoma brucei), and the bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis).

Is COVID-19 the name of the pathogen? Strictly speaking, no – it’s well established as being named “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” or “SARS-CoV-2.” Wikipedia mentions that it was provisionally named “2019 novel coronavirus” and also has been referred to as “human coronavirus 2019.”

When this was discussed in the quiz bowl Discord, it was mentioned that there are pages on the World Health Organization’s website that refer to the pathogen as the “COVID-19 virus.” While this is correct, I do not believe these pages were written in such a way that that phrase was being treated as the name of the pathogen. This page is an example of such a page.

To me, this is no different than writing “the bubonic plague bacteria.” That phrasing isn’t coining a name for the disease. It’s another way of writing “the bacteria that causes bubonic plague.”

I concluded, and still believe this is correct, that accepting COVID-19 in this circumstance is not correct. That is not the name of the pathogen. It is akin to accepting “the 16th president” as a correct answer for a question on Abraham Lincoln. The answer given is descriptive, not nominative. Accepting “bubonic plague” for a similarly written question on “Yersinia pestis” should not be acceptable.

Searching Google Scholar for "covid-19 virus" immediately returns a large number of hits. We don't have to go through all of them to see that it is very obvious that the virus that causes COVID-19 is often referred to as "the COVID-19 virus" and that that is also what the answerline has. It's unfortunate to get a protest resolution wrong, especially when it has a real impact on the results of a tournament, but it's something that can happen. It's not grounds to double down on an obviously wrong decision. The right thing here is to acknowledge the error and move on.

[AKKOLADE]

It's not grounds to double down on an obviously wrong decision. The right thing here is to acknowledge the error and move on.

I was asked to explain the process behind the protest resolution, which is what I did. Categorizing it as "doubling down on an obviously wrong decision" is ridiculously bad faith.

[Auks Ran Ova]

I concluded, and still believe this is correct, that accepting COVID-19 in this circumstance is not correct.

You wrote the above regarding a decision that has, at least in this thread, received universal opposition. You may not personally like it, but nothing about Naveed's characterization is "bad faith".

[Gene Harrogate]

For what it's worth, ACF's detailed correctness guidelines give fairly broad leeway for editors to overrule strict identifiers and accept what are technically category errors: i.e., "spoonerism" for "Reverend Spooner" (G.18). It seems implicit to me in the rulebook that editorial decisions should only be overruled when they are unambiguously—as opposed to conceivably—incorrect, in the same way that protest committees only accept answers deemed incorrect when they are unambiguously correct. I worry that this ruling, if taken as precedent, would equally imply that a protest committee should overrule an editorial decision on e.g. an answer of The Death of Artemio Cruz for Artemio Cruz, since that novel is not a character.

EDIT:

I concluded, and still believe this is correct, that accepting COVID-19 in this circumstance is not correct. That is not the name of the pathogen. It is akin to accepting “the 16th president” as a correct answer for a question on Abraham Lincoln. The answer given is descriptive, not nominative. Accepting “bubonic plague” for a similarly written question on “Yersinia pestis” should not be acceptable.

Granting that the given answer was descriptive (I couldn't say, but for argument's sake), G.16 only rules out descriptive answers "unless otherwise permitted by the answer line or by question text."

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

Not really sure what I get by adding to this pile-on but at the end of the day, protests are a system in place to prevent players from being wronged by insufficiencies in the packet. It's pretty disappointing for a pretty clear hail mary "eh let's protest and see what happens" hater protest to have gone through and had major implications for the results of a tournament.

[Bloodwych]

Rejecting that answer is obvious bullshit to anyone who has played quizbowl before, independent of whatever technical pathogen voodoo you cite.

[touchpack]

It is unambiguously true that "SARS-CoV-2" is the formal name of the virus and COVID-19 is the formal name of the disease. However, quizbowl's acceptability standards seldom force players to give the most formal possible answer. For example, Adam Smith wrote a book titled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. We do not require players to give that full title for their answer to be correct, because in common parlance it is referred to as just "The Wealth of Nations".

The same standard applies here. Naveed has already shown unambiguous proof that, within the field, "COVID-19 virus" is used enough to meet quizbowl's general standards for acceptability. I'd add my own personal experience that, in the hospital, I have basically never heard anyone say "SARS-CoV-2", and I very frequently hear people say (and type in the electronic medical record!) COVID-19, even in contexts that are referring to the pathogen itself and not necessarily the disease. For example, consider RSV/flu/COVID combination tests that test for the presence of the virus. Those tests cannot test for the disease, because the presence or absence of a disease state depends on physical symptoms and signs. I have seen plenty of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 RNA but did not have COVID-19, the disease, and were in the hospital for a completely unrelated reason. People still would say (and type in the chart) "COVID", not "SARS-CoV-2", when referring to the result of test that directly refers to the pathogen, because COVID is a common parlance term for the pathogen, much like "The Wealth of Nations" is common parlance for the Smith book.

Invoking the expertise of an infectious disease physician may not be helpful if said physician is unfamiliar with quizbowl's rules and standards. Honestly, in my experience on many protest committees for different events, in the majority of cases, the outcome of a protest is a rules question, not a facts question. It's great to have the input of a subject-matter expert, but the statements of fact made by that expert need to be interpreted in the context of the quizbowl rules to correctly adjudicate protests (which unfortunately was not done here).

[AKKOLADE]

Thanks to Naveed and Billy's posts, I now see I was wrong when I ruled on this protest. I apologize for the error, especially to the Maryland team at last year's NASAT that was directly affected by it.

[dni]

Fred, I am glad we are on the same page now, but I believe we would all like to see some procedural changes here to prevent, or at least safeguard against, an error of this magnitude reoccurring. From the sound of it, it seems like the protest committee at this tournament was basically just you, or was at least extremely limited in size. If so, I think it would be a good idea to consider having a dedicated protest committee at future NASATs. I am sure many people who worked on the set (writers, editors, playtesters), as well as staffers and other members of the greater quizbowl community, would be happy to serve in this capacity.

[AKKOLADE]

Fred, I am glad we are on the same page now, but I believe we would all like to see some procedural changes here to prevent, or at least safeguard against, an error of this magnitude reoccurring. From the sound of it, it seems like the protest committee at this tournament was basically just you, or was at least extremely limited in size. If so, I think it would be a good idea to consider having a dedicated protest committee at future NASATs. I am sure many people who worked on the set (writers, editors, playtesters), as well as staffers and other members of the greater quizbowl community, would be happy to serve in this capacity.

Ugh, I missed this post, I am bad at internet.

The protest committee was about six people if I recall correctly - people have left the Discord server, etc. They were all members on an ad hoc basis - two were available when I handled this protest. I ran it past them, they agreed with my argument. Neither were what I would call science specialists. It wasn't a lack of resources, it was that I was confidently wrong.

I am hoping to have someone else fully in charge of the protest committee - not entirely because of this experience, but also because of the stress of juggling incoming protests as well as handling rebracketing of four team groups at this year's Undergrad.

I've discussed the make up of protest committees in the past, and the majority of feedback I've received is that it's not ideal to have writers or editors serve on the protest committee. There are a couple of people I trust enough to go against this advice, but I do largely follow it.